Perpetual Light

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Title: Perpetual Light
Author: William Rose Benet
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERPETUAL
LIGHT ***
Produced by Skip Doughty, Charles Franks
and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
PERPETUAL LIGHT
"Ah, do not turn to me that face which is no longer
of this world!...
There are enough angels to
serve the mass in Heaven! Have pity on
me, who
am only a man without wings, who rejoiced in this

companion God had given me, and that I should
hear her sigh with
her head resting on my shoulder!...
the bitterness like the bitterness of

myrrh... And for you age is already come.
But how hard it is to
renounce when the heart is
young!"
"THE TIDINGS BROUGHT TO MARY"
PERPETUAL
LIGHT
A Memorial.
BY
WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT
..that we may be able to arrive
with pure minds at the festival
of
perpetual light. Through the
same Christ our Lord. Amen.

--_Oremus._
DEDICATION
TO KATHLEEN AND MARGARET

Think of no verse when you read this,
But think of her alone
And
her enduring benefice,
Sunlight on stone.
For day is stone and night is stone
Save she has made them bright,

Now she knows all that may be known
Of day and night.
Courage like hers we have from her,
Strength to be straight and brave,

And noble memories that recur
And heal and save.
By her clear eyes, by her pure brows,
We take the Sign,
And kneel
within her Father's house--
And yours and mine.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The first eleven poems in the section entitled, "Before" originally
appeared in my first volume, "Merchants from Cathay" published by
the Century Company. This volume is now out of print and I hold the
copyright. The three poems following these originally appeared in my
second volume, "The Falconer of God and Other Poems." For
permission to reprint a few of the remaining poems I have to thank the
editors of _Reedy's Mirror, The Bang, The Lyric, The Madrigal_, The
Sun Dial _(New York Evening Sun), Everybody's Magazine, The
Century
Magazine_, and "Books and the Book World" (New York
Sunday Sun). For the group, "The Long Absence" in the section
entitled, "After," I owe thanks to _The Yale Review_.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
BEFORE
The Snare of the Fowler
Thwarted Utterance
The Song
of Her
"Always I Know You Anew"
The Rival Celestial
The
Tamer of Steeds
Love in Armor
Wardrobe of Remembrance
The
Second Covenant
Dedication to a First Book
The Shadowed Road

Love in the Dawn
"Had I a Claim to Fame?"
The One
Dream
and Deed
A Taper of Incense
To Purity
Atonement
The

Adoration
Talisman
Recognition
The Silver Hind
Aristeas
Relates His Youth
Man Possessed
Miniature
Death Will Make
Clear
Sunlight
And a Long Way Off He Saw Fairyland
In Time
of Trouble
Anomaly
The Lover
Judgment
Unforgotten
The
Pale Dancer
Premonition
AFTER
Introductory Poem
The Long Absence
By the Counsel of
Her Hands
Strength Beyond Strength
Que Sais-Je?
Ebb-Tide

Coward
Aquilifer
The Woman
Pervigilium
Time Was
The
Masters
When
Children
The Retreat
Sealed
FOREWORD
TERESA FRANCES THOMPSON, who also bore my name by
marriage, died on January 26, 1919. This verse is published to her
memory, because I wish to keep together the poetry she occasioned and
enable those who loved her--and they were a great many-to know
definitely what she was to me.
I think that is the truth. This is the only means I have at present of
acknowledging publicly the vast debt I owe to her.
As I turn these poems over--if they are even to be called poems--I
realize that they can never begin to express what her personality was.
The earliest ones were written by a boy who was in love, and the latest
by a man who has suddenly stepped into the dark. Those between are
fragments from the days when we were struggling along together at the
everyday tasks and outside interests and dreams that possessed us. The
war entered our lives to change them in September, 1917. The poem,
"Man Possessed," was written within sound of her actual voice, the
others